First osmosis power plant goes on stream in Norway

THE world's first prototype osmotic power station came on stream last week. Sited on the banks of the Oslo fjord at Tofte in southern Norway, it generates electricity by exploiting the process that keeps plants standing upright and the cells of our own bodies swollen, rigid and hydrated.

Osmosis occurs wherever two solutions of different concentrations meet at a semipermeable membrane. The spontaneous passage of water through the membrane from dilute to concentrated solutions generates a pressure difference. This can be used to drive a turbine and generate electricity.

"The potential is huge," Terje Riis- Johansen, the Norwegian minister for petroleum and energy, said at the new plant's opening ceremony.

Statkraft, the renewable energy giant running the project, estimates the global potential of osmotic power to be around 1700-terawatt-hours per year - about 10 per cent of ...

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